This week we commemorated the third yahrzeit, the anniversary of the passing, of a great man and a personal mentor. For over 30 years, my family had the privilege of spending summers in a camp in the Catskills mountains in upstate New York. The staff of this camp became like family to us, and the memories we have of those halcyon days, continue to bring us joy and inspiration. 

It also gave us the opportunity to become close friends with Rabbi David Trenk of blessed memory. 

Rabbi Trenk was by no means your standard, run of the mill rabbinical type. He exuded joy on an exuberant level, teaching in thundering but loving tones. He was wont to say “if a student asks a question, it is the most important question in the world. Why? Because he is asking it! Because the student wants to learn”

He also looked at everyone with complete positivity. His year long job involved working with students who had fallen through the “cracks” of the educational system. 

Rabbi Trenk never viewed his students as anything but great. And his persistent belief in their greatness convinced them they were truly great. 

At his funeral, one of the students gave a tearful eulogy. He said when he and his friends were younger, no one wanted them. But now they are successful and community leaders everyone wants them. Only Rabbi Trenk saw their greatness back then and loved them for who they were. 

He wouldn’t sit still for a moment, constantly on the go, pursuing his mission to help his students succeed. 

It was poetry in motion. 

This middah, or attribute spilled over into all his interactions with the people he would encounter. 

The mechanic who serviced his car, told Mrs. Trenk that a regular customer at his shop was a big, burly, scary looking truck driver. When he would walk into the shop everyone shrank back and took a step away. One day Rabbi Trenk and the truck driver entered together. Rabbi Trenk greeted the gentleman with great warmth and his trademark exuberance, calling him “my brother”!  After the truck driver exited, one of the other patrons asked Rabbi Trenk if he even knew the man in question, let alone, calling him a brother. 

“He is a brother” responded Rabbi Trenk “did you not see the Magen David necklace he wore around his neck?”

He is indeed a brother. 

No one else looked closely enough to see. 

No one else looked past the externals. 

No one saw the innerness of the person. 

This week’s Torah portion talks about Korach, a relative of Moses who cried nepotism. He felt the job of High Priest was conferred upon Aaron just because he was Moses’ brother. 

Gd makes clear that this decision came from Gd by ultimately opening up the earth and swallowing Korach and his followers. 

But even after that cataclysmic event, the people called into question the leadership role of the tribe of Levi. 

So once again a miraculous proof was tendered. 

Moses took a staff representing each of the tribes and put it in the Tabernacle overnight. The next morning all the staffs were unchanged, except for the one that belonged to the Levite tribe. 

It had miraculously sprouted almond blossoms. 

We know that nothing in the Torah is random. 

What lesson can we learn from the blossoms being almond blossoms? 

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, German 19th century leader, comments that the first tree to bear flowers in the season of spring is the almond tree. 

(They sing a song about it in Israel!) All the trees are receiving the same nutrients, but it is the almond tree that blooms first. So too it was the Tribe of Levi that answered the call first at the time of the Golden Calf. Moses called out to the nation, whoever is for Gd follow me! Everyone was there, anyone could have answered the call. But it was the Levites who took the lead. 

They blossomed first. 

In our own lives we are often faced with challenges large and small, jobs that need to be done. It is the person who takes the lead and does the job who ultimately shows their inner greatness. 

This certainly personifies Rabbi Trenk. 

He often loved to quote a thought from this week’s Torah portion regarding those staffs. 

The Kli Yakar, 16th century commentary, teaches that the miracle of the blossoming of those sticks is just that. They were dried up sticks of wood, disconnected from a source, seemingly incapable of bringing forth any blossom. 

Yet, the staff of the Tribe of Levi bloomed. 

The message is, even a dried up piece of wood still may have a drop of moisture inside. That the drop can birth a world. 

Poetically, the stick is like a person. 

Even though we may not see the greatness in the person, we just see a “piece of wood”, a lump on a log, a hopeless case-

we can never give up on anyone, no matter how poor the outcome looks, because there is always life to be found, possibility and potential is waiting to burst forth. 

My family is forever blessed to have seen first hand how Rabbi Trenk’s attitude of love and positivity can change people, allowing the last lonely drop of life giving moisture to yield beautiful and eternal blossoms. 

May his memory continue to spur us all to action. 

In the memory of

R Menachem Yechiel Dovid ben Avraham Yehoshua Heschel z”l

Shabbat Shalom and so much Love!